


Enough

by likeseriouslyellie



Category: The Haunting of Bly Manor (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Dani can't make hot drinks, F/F, Flashbacks, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Nightmares, No one dies here though, Panic Attacks, dani will give all the hugs, in my head at least, ish i guess, jamie had a rough childhood and needs all the hugs, no graphic details to implied/referenced stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,726
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28310916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeseriouslyellie/pseuds/likeseriouslyellie
Summary: "Jamie isn’t always okay. She tries so damn hard to hide it, to be fine, because she’s always had to. Her walls are a carefully constructed thing, built out of brutal necessity during a childhood where everything seemed to come at her with the force of a battering ram.Still, people found their way in."
Relationships: Dani Clayton/Jamie
Comments: 9
Kudos: 77





	Enough

**Author's Note:**

> I haven't posted anything I've written since 2016, but this show has pulled me back into the fanfic world. Any and all mistakes are mine. Comments make me happy :)

Jamie isn’t always okay. She tries so damn hard to hide it, to be fine, because she’s always had to. Her walls are a carefully constructed thing, built out of brutal necessity during a childhood where everything seemed to come at her with the force of a battering ram. Walls built without doors, to unscalable heights, thickened and reinforced over her life. She couldn’t count the nights she had spent with her palms pressed to her eyes until constellations flickered from the pressure, telling herself not to cry, that crying didn’t fix a goddamned thing. Visualising herself curling up inside her own clenched chest; alone, safe.

Still, people found their way in.

Her little brother, all tiny limbs and red cheeks at four years old. _Only a baby._ Her, all of ten years old, holding his chubby hand as he screamed for a mother she could not give him; as he quieted and slept while she read her school journals to him, struggling her way through words like ‘abandon’ and ‘intimidate’ and ‘sanctuary’, while other words, ‘dyke’, ‘whore’, ‘slut’-- wormed their way into the recesses of her mind.  
Her little brother, screaming in pain, and maybe she didn’t yet know the word excruciating but god, her body knew it.  
Her little brother, torn from her arms, gripping as tight as his toddler fingers could manage. Her screaming too, not from the pain of the still-bubbling skin breaking beneath his hold. Screaming as he was carried away from her by hardened hands. Disappearing behind a quickly closing door while her dirty shoes kicked against white hospital sheets.  
 _Build a wall. Shut yourself in. Shut them out._

Dani knows about Mikey. The bones of the story had been laid before her that night amongst the moonflowers, and the scar that covered her shoulder had drawn out a few scarce details. Dani never pushed, but Jamie felt her compassion (not pity, she had to remind herself) in every tender kiss, the gentle pressure as Dani traced the outline of the raised tissue. As if the scar was a mark of something other than Jamie’s failure to protect the one who trusted her.

Sometimes, when she wakes up with icey-sharp tingling pain piercing the long-healed skin, Jamie closes her eyes and holds Dani’s words within her. Just letting them be in her mind, her lungs, her heart.

“You were just a kid. You did everything you could. You were so brave, love.”

Sometimes, it even feels okay. Sometimes her thoughts stutter over the word brave. It’s enough, though. Enough to break through to the now, to pull her back into her body, into Dani’s body. It’s enough that Dani believes it’s true.

Charlie was twenty-three and called her James with a wry twist to her mouth that made her heart race in a way she’d never felt before. Charlie would entice her with a hand wrapping around her waist and a shared fag in an empty London alleyway. Only fourteen, and she felt so grown up, so alive. So she picked locks and stole cash and kissed Charlie. Jamie let her unwrap her body in the corner of a crowded shelter and decided she was in love. She chain-smoked against the bitter winter and let Charlie direct a needle into her arm when she couldn’t stop the memories from crowding her head. And when the withdrawals hit, when Charlie sat shaking in a corner yelling at her, " _what fucking good are you, bitch?_ " she allowed herself to be pushed to her knees again and again. Swallowed against her gag reflex as ice and stones dug into her knees. Finally collected her payment in the form of one tiny bag of dirty white powder. Told herself, told Charlie, she’d run one more job and then she was out. She didn’t have a plan.  
When she jimmied the lock, grabbed the jewellery from the dresser in the main bedroom and looked around for backup only to find two burly cops blocking the doorway, she realised the job had been too easy. And when she glanced up as she was escorted out to meet Charlie’s eyes across the road, she knew she’d been set up.  
 _Block it out. Build a wall. Alone is better._

“The wrong kind of love can fuck you up,” she’d told Dani. It hadn’t come up again for almost a year, not until Dani caught her in a dream, muttering muddled memories in sleepy confusion. And so an outline was drawn in the blue morning hours. Boiled down to the minimum, not because she didn’t trust Dani to hold her past but because the words stuck in her throat. _It hadn’t been love_ , she’d insisted.

“There’s different kinds of love,” Dani replied, “and it’s okay if you did love her. If you needed to love her.”

“You did what you needed to survive,” Dani tells her, as she presses her fingers to the few track marks that linger, faded, to the jagged scar above her hip where a piece of wire had caught as she fled a crime scene.

And years of Therapy-With-Tamara and time with her hands buried in fertile soil meant Jamie could agree with that. Didn’t judge herself as harshly as she once had. She had done her time, had bettered herself in the following years.

Still, there were days, nights, when she wasn’t okay. When the worst of the memories would surface through sleep, or the light would catch on the parallel, silvered scars across her upper arm and hips. When pain that she’s pushed down and down and down, things she’s never told Dani, never even put words to, crash through her dreams. Things she’s tried so hard to kill coming back to life in those moments when her back is turned.

Through the haze of terror and sense memory she is able to hope for a fleeting second that her screams have stayed within her own head. But then the light on Dani’s side of the bed is flicked on, and Jamie wants to reassure, brush this off, tell Dani to go back to sleep. She’s had a string of rough nights of her own lately, the last thing she needs is Jamie going fucking mental when she’s finally been able to get some rest-- but the words won’t come and her breath is rattling against constricted lungs and she needs to get out, get out, _get out._  
She staggers from the bed and makes it as far as the corner of the room, crouches, curls in on herself, walls pressing in on two sides. Against the wall so she can see who’s coming because there’s no use in running, she never gets far. She isn’t sure whether her eyes are open or closed but her vision is hazy and there’s a hand on her arm and she screams, throwing herself hard into the wall. Bites down on her own hand, trying not to make any more noise but she can’t breath and she coughs around the taste of blood. The pain is enough to cut through for a moment, another voice, not his. Dani, Dani, _Dani_ … she realises she’s speaking, that her mouth is moving, disconnected. And suddenly she’s here. Still gasping, still can’t get a fucking breath, but at least she’s here, and she opens her eyes and all she sees is Dani. Dani, whose mouth is moving and Jamie forces the small part of her brain currently under her control to focus.

“...with me. Breathe with me, love,” and Jamie tries. She grabs for a stuttering breath, ends up coughing, adrenaline shooting through her and what if she can never breathe again? But Dani has asked her to breathe, _anything for Dani._ She reaches out blindly, fisting her hand in Dani’s shirt. Fingers tangle with hers, pulling her hand up, resting it against Dani’s chest and oh. Jamie can feel each inhalation, each beat of Dani’s heart and that is good. Better. Enough. She pulls in another heaving gasp, and it works.

“Good, that’s so good, Jay. Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

‘ _Got you, got you, got you,_ ’ Jamie’s mind echoes. She tugs Dani’s hand.

“Can I hold you?” Jamie is nodding before Dani finishes speaking. She’d already be curled around Dani if her bloody body would listen to her. Dani eases herself down next to her, wrapping her arm around Jamie’s shoulders, pulling her to rest against her chest. Jamie knows she’s still trembling, tense, faint nausea playing in the pit of her stomach but the soft thrum of Dani’s heart beneath her ear is soothing. And Jamie doesn’t cry, not about this, never about this, because it wasn’t allowed but now there is moisture pooling against Dani’s tee shirt and it terrifies her for a moment. But Dani, perfect Dani just cups her head, pulls her closer. Her thumbs move in rhythmic circles against her cheek and shoulder and she doesn’t rush or ask questions and Jamie feels _safe._

That safety seems to release something within her. Even as her breathing evens out, slows, the tears come faster until she’s sobbing into Dani’s chest. When she’s finally cried out, she finds her body stiff from so long in the same position. She sniffs hard, pulling back slightly.

“Sorry ‘bout your shirt. ‘S a bit wet.” Her voice is cracked and low. Dani meets her eyes, and Jamie sees that hers are red-rimmed too.

“It’s fine. Nothing to be sorry about, baby.” Dani sits up, arches her back against the wall. “Do you think we can move somewhere a bit more comfortable now?” When Jamie nods, Dani pushes herself up. She winces as her knees click loudly and reaches a hand out for Jamie.

Jamie sways a bit once upright and Dani pulls her into a tight hug. “Tea?” she asks hopefully. Dani gives her a slight grin, nods. Grabs the afghan off the end of their bed and wraps it around Jamie’s shoulders, holding it there until Jamie grabs the corners to hold it in place herself. She still feels slightly apart from her body, a bit not present, and it takes a minute to get her limbs to respond. She lets Dani guide her out to the couch and curls up in the corner underneath a fern in a hanging basket. Dani flicks the standing lamp on, dims the light until it’s just a warm glow across the room. Her eyelids are heavy; exhaustion is settling deep in her bones but there’s still far too much adrenaline for it to take over, the nightmare still too close. It’s better to let it dissipate completely before risking sleep. Jamie rests in the sounds of Dani in the kitchen, the quiet roar of the electric kettle. By the time Dani pushes a hot cup into her hands, she’s breathing normally again.

Dani places her own cup on the coffee table and sits, bringing her feet up under her. The silence drags. It’s not uncomfortable, but it is expectant. The warmth of the drink simmers into Jamie’s hands, through skin and veins and bones, focusing her attention. Bringing her the rest of the way back into herself. She takes a sip, and it’s perfect. It’s not right, it never is when Dani makes it, but the familiarity of it is the last thing she needs to pull herself back to the Here. To Vermont, with Dani, in their little flat.

Jamie ends up lying across the full length of the couch, her head in Dani’s lap, facing out toward the room. Dani runs her fingers through her hair repetitively, and the unconscious tenderness is the push that Jamie needs to finally speak.

“Told you before I went into foster care when I was ten, yeah?” She watches Dani nod out of the corner of her eye, keeps her eyes down. “Was in a few different places. My last one, I was there for two years, just about. Got there right before my twelfth birthday. I’d racked up a bit of a bad reputation, what with running away from the previous places, so they made a deal with me. Told me I could see Mikey once a week if I behaved well enough to not be kicked out. Hadn’t seen him since they separated us, I didn’t even know where he was.

So they send me off to this couple. They’ve got no other kids there, and I’m thinking, this might be alright. A room to myself, Mikey back in my life, and the man, Mr. Douglas, he’s looking at me like maybe he cares. Maybe he wants me around. The CPS lady leaves, and I get the first decent meal I’ve had in months. And a week passes and I haven’t seen Mikey, and they tell me they’re trying to sort it out. And then, one night, Mr Douglas comes into my room and--”

Dani’s hand is on hers, gently removing her fingers from where she’s digging her nails into her own arm, tangling them with hers instead. Tiny beads of blood bloom in the indents left behind. “Jamie, you don’t--”

Jamie cuts her off. “Please, just let me… if I stop now I’ll never say it and it’s _bad_ and I should've told you sooner and I just-- please,” when Dani squeezes her hand, nods, Jamie takes a steadying breath.

“I’d been in shite places before. They’d not fed me and hit me and I was used to that and this felt almost… tender, at first. Not _right,_ but it’s not like I really had any clue what right was. He told me if I… if I made him happy, then he’d take me to see Mikey. Turned out ‘happy’ had a hidden meaning. He… he, I had to--” she broke off, huffed a sardonic laugh. “He just wanted more and more and it was never good enough and if I ever asked questions then it hurt worse. I was such an _idiot_. Thought if I just kept going he’d make good on his end of the deal. Two fucking years, I stayed. I just wanted, all I wanted was to see my little brother. And I know it’s horrible and I could’ve left sooner and I was an idiot to think they were telling the truth and I’m sorry, I’m so sorry--”

Dani tugs her arm firmly, pushing her up so that she can look her in the eye. “Stop. _Please_ just stop.” Her eyes are wet with tears but hard with what Jamie reads as anger, and in the rough sea of emotion she’s been tossed into tonight, she isn’t sure whether it’s directed at her. “I’m so sorry, baby. It _is_ horrible, and I am so sorry that that happened. But, you’re not an idiot. Adults should be trustworthy and you were so, so little. None of it was your fault. What he did, that was sadistic and abusive and _sick,_ and you did nothing wrong there, Jamie. Nothing.”

“But I must’ve done something, right? Because none of them liked me, Dani. None of them. I was just… too much, I guess.”

Dani is shaking her head before Jamie finishes speaking. “You got stuck with a whole lot of bad people. That doesn’t make you bad. You did everything you could for Mikey. You always do, you put everything into helping the people you love. That makes you brave, and _good_. You’re a good person. And you’re not too much. Not for me. Not ever.”

Jamie rests her forehead against Dani’s. Her mind is screaming at her that Dani is lying, of _course_ it’s her fault, that one person telling her differently doesn’t change anything. Telling her that even speaking about something so wrong makes her bad. Jamie closes her eyes, forces it down. Forces it back until it fades to a low rumble, because she trusts Dani. Dani is her person, her safe place.  
Dani is flicking on the tv, selecting some light-hearted rom-com, kissing her gently. Dani is holding her like she means something, and Dani is doing all of this without asking for anything in return.

Jamie isn’t always okay, but she’s found a person that she can be not-okay around. Someone who has seen her scarred underbelly, and hasn’t attacked or run away. That’s more than enough, Jamie thinks. That is everything.


End file.
